


A Semblance of Control

by nerdyvixen



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Extremely Cursed Rarepairs, F/M, sex as an ill-advised coping mechanism, sometimes boring bondage is better than nothing at all, the real rarepair here would be richard strand/emotional transparency but who has the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:53:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyvixen/pseuds/nerdyvixen
Summary: It's always strange to see someone you used to to be intimate with after a long time, and Alex fully expects Richard to be thinking about Coralee the night his wife re-disappears.He's not.He's thinking about Emily Dumont.Also, his hand's still on her thigh, and really, she can only try to parse one mystery at a time.
Relationships: Alex Reagan/Richard Strand, past Richard Strand/Emily Dumont
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	A Semblance of Control

**Author's Note:**

> Does this only loosely follow the rarepair challenge? Yes.
> 
> Did I have fun with it anyway? Also yes.

Richard really needs to talk to her. They’ve had a big day; Coralee reappearing, saving them, breaking Richard’s heart again, and then vanishing had been a lot. He should talk about his feelings. It would be good for him, and Alex knows he hasn’t had much that’s been good for him.

There’s another reason, though: he’s on his third glass of bourbon, he hasn’t eaten much all day, and while they’ve made it through the tapes and their memories, their companionable silence is currently punctuated by his hand resting on her thigh.

She’s trying not to stare at it. At _him._ It’s not working. She clears her throat and ventures, “It’s weird seeing someone you used to be intimate with for the first time after awhile. I can’t pick up Amalia from the airport without remembering the last time we slept together.”

_Wrong, wrong, so very wrong_ is that to say, and she winces, ready for his inevitable dismissal. Instead, his fingers flex on her leg, and he drinks in silence. Loud, awkward silence. Alex swallows. “Did--I mean, did you guys talk about that? She loves you. You don’t have to look very hard to see that. I could tell she was thinking about it.”

He takes a swig of bourbon.

“You only look at someone like that when you’ve seen them naked,” Alex rushes on. Her cheeks burn. “She was definitely thinking about the last time you had sex.”

He snorts. His hand shifts again; his fingers press now into her inner thigh. “I wasn’t,” he says.

“Liar,” she retorts. Her voice is teasing so she doesn’t look down or let her legs fall open or worse, climb into his lap and tell him to hold onto his bourbon while she puts him back together. Probably naked. “You were. You had to have been.”

“I wasn’t,” he insists. “If you must know--”

“Oh, _definitely_ \--”

“--I wasn’t thinking about Coralee.” He tosses back the last of his drink and grimaces at the burn. “I was thinking about sex with Emily Dumont, actually.”

She stops.

Stares.

Gapes.

“Close your mouth, Alex,” he chides. “It’s not that shocking.”

“You called her a hack with an understanding of the human condition so dim it would make an invertebrate seem like a genius,” she says. “ _Shocking_ is putting it mildly.”

He shrugs, studying the ice left in his glass. “It was bound to happen. Vitriol has few outlets. She liked the idea of controlling me, and I was lonely enough to let her.”

She blinks. “ _What?_ ”

“It was a conference,” he continues as though he isn’t completely breaking Alex’s brain. “I’d had a lot of wine. Thought it was a good idea, but she was the most _boring_ domme I’ve encountered. Sloppy ropework. Predictable.” His fingertips drum an idle rhythm on their slow dance higher up her thigh, and she’s so distracted by the thought of Richard Strand being dommed by _anyone_ , much less by Emily Dumont, that she doesn’t notice.

Almost.

“She had so _little_ imagination. Practically cliche.” He raises the glass to his lips and fishes out a half-melted ice cube with his tongue, rolling it around his mouth for a few moments before he crushes it between his teeth and swallows. “I was bored ten minutes in, but some contact was better than nothing. I faked it. She sends me a card every year to remind me I’ve been on my knees for her. I think Ruby’s made a collage of them.”

At this point, Alex forgets how to breathe. The combination of imagining Richard, bound and on his knees, and seeing him practically go down on his glass is frankly dizzying, and the honesty and sexual subject matter aren’t helping either. _There’s no way he didn’t mean to do that,_ she thinks, panicked, unable to get the image of Richard and that ice cube out of her head. _He knows exactly what that looks like. He can’t--_ Reflexively, she squeezes her thighs together, which has the side effect of trapping his fingers between them.

“Wait,” she blurts. “You _faked_ it?”

He looks over at her; she feels like she’s drowning in blue. A slow grin curls his mouth. “My wife,” he tells her, “could fake her death. I figured out how to fake enough of a small one to get Dumont off my back.” He pauses. His grip tightens enough that she leans towards him automatically. “Literally, in that case.”

She feels lightheaded. “You saw your wife for the first time since she vanished, and the only thing you could think about was Emily Dumont?”

“I’m fascinated by control, Alex.” In spite of the bourbon, his voice is clear, deep, rich. “Who has it. Who needs it. Who needs the semblance of it.”

“And you needed the semblance of it.”

“No, Alex,” he corrects. “I _need_ the semblance of it.”

She shifts, leaning closer to him, enough to pick out the threads of gray running through his dark hair. “That’s why your hand’s been on my thigh for the past hour.”

“If you come over here, it won’t stay there.” He meets her half-way, pressing his mouth against the pulsepoint in her throat in a ghost of a kiss. “I promise you, my imagination is _much_ better than Dumont’s.”

She arches against him, gives up on propriety, and climbs into his lap. His hands, as promised, move, one of them dipping into her back pocket. He squeezes. She bites back a whimper. “Did you tell me about Emily Dumont tying you up to _flirt with me?_ ”

“I’m rusty.”

“Liar.”

“But I’m dedicated,” he continues. “I know what you like. A _story_. A challenge.” He reaches up and tangles a hand in her hair, tipping her head back to look at him. “Take me apart, Alex. Take me apart and put me back together and I’ll tell you the exact pickup line Dumont used on me at the hotel bar.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” she says breathlessly, grinding against him.

He grins wolfishly. “Speaking of hard--”

“Oh my _god_ , I’m not fucking you now--”

“Alex.” The humor leaves. He’s heated now, molten. “Are you going to leave me so needy?”

_Are you going to leave me?_ “Never,” she tells him. “Even if I have to tie you up to keep you here.”

He drags her down to him, and his kiss is hot enough to burn. “Promises, promises.”


End file.
